Mixing of all orders and pairwise independent joinings of systems with singular spectrum (Q1196343)

In this remarkable paper, the author makes an important contribution to the question of Rokhlin and Halmos, whether mixing of all orders holds for every mixing system. He shows that every mixing system with purely singular spectrum is mixing of all orders. Recently, \textit{J. Bourgain} [Isr. J. Math. 84, No. 1-2, 53-63 (1993; Zbl 0787.28011)] has shown that all members of Ornstein's class of rank one mixing transformations have singular spectrum, giving immediate application of the above result [although earlier \textit{S. A. Kalikow}, Ergodic Theory Dyn. Sys. 4, 237- 259 (1984; Zbl 0552.28016) showed that for rank one transformations, mixing implies 3-mixing]. The above result is a consequence of another important result: Every pairwise independent joining of \(r\geq 3\) weakly mixing systems with purely singular spectrum is independent. For \(r\geq 2\), a joining of \(r\) dynamical systems \((X_ i,{\mathcal B}_ i,T_ i,\mu_ i)\), \(1\leq i\leq r\), is a probability measure \(\omega\) on \(\Pi_ i(X_ i,{\mathcal B}_ i)\) invariant under \(\Pi_ i T_ i\), and whose projection on each \(X_ i\) is equal to \(\mu_ i\). The joining \(\omega\) is pairwise independent if its projection on \(X_ i\times X_ j\) is \(\mu_ i\times\mu_ j\) \((i\neq j)\), and is independent if \(\omega= \Pi_ i\mu_ i\). The main tool used in the proof is Theorem 5, which says: Let \(\rho\) be a measure on \(\mathbb{T}^ 3\) \((\mathbb{T}= \mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})\), supported on \(H=\{(s,t,u): s+ t+ u= 0\}\), such that each natural projection on \(\mathbb{T}^ 2\) is absolutely continuous with respect to some product measure. Then each projection of \(\rho\) on \(\mathbb{T}\) is the sum of a discrete measure and an absolutely continuous measure.